Sioen's Comments (399)

“No offense meant, but comparing Obama's total sellout of any meaningful reform to Clinton's abject failure on the basis of a nonexistent subject in a passive-voice clause ("was regarded as"????) doesn't offer me much to work with.

The Clinton presidency "was regarded as a success" by whom, precisely, and in which policy areas? It wasn't a success to me nor to many of my progressive friends. Those were years where mainstream Democrats sold any of the few remaining principles they had left to corporate power. Big-money investors who could help them consolidate control... which they then lost, anyway, in no small part because of the complete and total failure of the Clinton administration to get anything at all done on health care.

So please, try again.”

“The reasons for my belief that the Senate bill will not be made better are contained -- woah, weird! -- right there in the same sentence as the claim.

I did not invoke a crystal ball, but rather offered reasons for my analysis. Thanks for playing!”

“Unfortunately, this isn't change. Not slowly, not surely, not incrementally. This is more of the same as always -- corporate control of politicians leading to laws that make corporations more wealthy and powerful.

The Senate bill will not be made better over time, because it has nothing to build on and it enshrines into law the dysfunctional and inefficient system we have in place already. You can't leap a chasm in two jumps.

If we don't stop this health insurance bill, American health care will get worse and worse with each passing year.”

“me, too!

tho I have given some cash directly to some of my favorite artists and programmers.”

“The problem is that the evidence doesn't support your claim. There is just as much evidence that the greater good to children and society is served by ALSO allowing gay people to be in legally committed relationships and raise children as there is for the other side.

So again it comes down to your preference. Despite the evidence, your preference is for one way. Which is no basis to refuse people equality. We ought to have unshakeable evidence and very demanding causes to refuse people equality.”

“This I would vote for. The current insurance-industry-handout? Kill it.”

“Thank you, MoveOn! Giving in now would signal that progressives won't really fight for anything with this administration.

Can we demand better? Yes, we can!”

“Except that THIS particular bill is not any general situation. This is a very specifically bad bill, and not passing it would be better than passing it. Mandating insurance without lowering costs or offering meaningful competition will not result in more people being covered or staying healthy.

What it will do is make people think something has been accomplished, which will dampen anyone's drive to actually fix it. And there is NOTHING in this bill to build on, so that we could, as you say, get something that will lead to something else.

They have removed anything that could lead to something else. It is simply a handout to insurance companies. No thanks.

And if the Democrats screw this up by refusing to have the very backbone we elected them to have... then I will once again stop voting for them, like I did in 1994 after Clinton showed his grotesque Republican-lite nonsense. I would hope the Democrats would have learned something from what that last cycle did to this country.

Doing the job you were elected to do -- that would have been change I could have believed in. This bill? The chant should be, "No, we won't!"”

“No, I'm not. I'm an atheist, which means I don't "believe" at all. I reject anything we cannot know -- or at least make an informed, weighted estimate of the likelihood of -- as nonsense.

That isn't a belief. It's the absence of "belief," at least in the ordinary religious use of the word.

I'm not criticizing you personally, but I think agnosticism in general is a bit silly -- just cutting off argument about some things by saying they aren't knowable, they can't be knowable, so stop talking about it -- and has always seemed a bit intellectually shallow.

We can, in fact, group things into categories based on whether we can or cannot know or demonstrate them to be true (knowability is a range, of course, as some things have more or less demonstrable data behind them and so the final status of their knowability isn't determined).

You can make up random examples of things we *don't* know -- such as whether unicorns exist -- but those are different from whether we *can* know them. Inventing an unknowable category doesn't make its lack of truth less real. I can sit here all day and posit random made-up crap, but this doesn't affect truth in the only ways we have to our senses to judge and discuss truth.”

“I didn't read Hitchens' piece, because I am an atheist and I don't usually enjoy the way he goes about his arguments...

but Wilson's rambling bit of inanity was completely incomprehensible. He doesn't even have the decency to actually build for the reader the straw man that he continually refers to; instead he just blathers on and on about some unclear referent.

I came here because of the subtitle of the story -- invoking the idea of morals. Where do we get our morals from? Wilson doesn't even address the topic.

The answer is simple, though: All the morality you need can be found in simple, secular, human terms. Don't act in antisocial ways that you wouldn't want others acting like toward you.

More simply: Do nothing nonconsensual. Consensuality is the greatest force of morality in the world, and the only thing it derives from is a very basic "even a 2-year-old can understand" mechanism. When people do unpleasant things to you, you don't like it. So don't do unpleasant things to other people. That is morality. The god nonsense is just silly stories to make stupid people feel better about their lives.”

“I'm digging around in my files for one instance of his brilliance as a jurist... nope, nothing's there. He sometimes writes with rhetorical flourish, but so does Dave Barry -- doesn't make you fit to judge.”

“If more Christians weren't so loathsome and intolerant in their actions, it would be easier to get along with them.”

“It bothers me because it honors one religious belief on public land. Our government, founded on the idea that all religions would be treated equally, shouldn't be winking at one over the others.

This whole argument is ridiculous, and the offense is obvious. If it was a Muslim crescent and star, most people would freak out.

The only serious defenders are people who want to privilege one religion.”

“Actually, any of us who don't want the government favoring any one religious group are offended. I don't have a lot of extra time, but I have enough to recognize that we can't allow the government to start endorsing one religion over another. That slope leads to tyranny.”

“I suppose we should also just leave any and all discrimination based on religious views.

On government land, no one religious group should be favored. This isn't hard to understand, and you're being an atheist doesn't add any relevance to your non-argument, sorry.”

“Easily the single best comment, argument, discussion or explanation of the need for health care reform that anyone has put out there.

Thank you, Olbermann, for being a patriot, for reminding us that America ought to have values, real moral values, that if our liberty and democracy is to mean anything, it has to mean that we, at least, protect all of our citizens against pain, suffering and death to the best of our ability.

Thanks for reminding us that as American people we are all in this together, no matter how the shrill screamers might try to divide us, and that we must fight together against the non-people, the insurance corporations that exist, by law, only to maximize their profits, not to make people healthy.”

“No one's telling the insurance companies not to SPEAK -- just not to LIE. No wonder the GOP's so upset -- they think those two words mean the same thing!”

“Hurrah for the Janky Barge! Yes, yes, yes.. =)”

“LOL, you channeled the truth. Meets Star Wars, too, now -- a couple of years ago someone brought a huge Sandcrawler (the Jawas' vehicle) that roamed the playa.”

“An individual who is self-reliant and thinking things through can also go for the ticket price plus another $300, with gifts to bring and things to share. It can also cost thousands. I've done it both ways, I like the cheaper, more sustainable-living way a whole lot better. Depends on the choices you make.”

“It's also not exclusive of fun and games. And it may or may not take a lifetime -- depends on how fast you learn (and of course whether you have a belief system that dictates how long it will take) and where you were expecting to go to begin with.”

“You're mishearing the hype if you think anyone claimed it was free of rape or sexual assault -- or theft or vandalism or fights, for that matter. We do have a significantly lower crime rate than you'll find anywhere of equal size, though.

I'm not criticizing overall, though -- both you and xderloin make good points for folks to think about: Epiphany isn't confined to one place or time, and no group or "scene" has ever had a corner on the market.

What I find most cool -- as someone who didn't need to go to Burning Man to find my zen, but went anyway and found additional awesome revelation -- is that the insanely fun spectacle doesn't interfere with the spirit of grace, it actually enhances the whole thing. Makes me think the Dionysian followers might have been on to something.

it's also really cool to be able to expose folks who are only there for the revels to the deeper meaning tucked inside. But like you said, it's certainly not an either/or thing. Mindfulness and loving kindness don't have to be relegated to some dreary, quiet nook of seriousness.”

“For someone who's never gone, you have a really bad case of "It used to be so much better when-itus."

It hasn't lost the innocence (which actually wasn't there, really, but exists only in the addled minds of people trying to remember it), it's just gained many layers of complexity, nuance and confusing depth.”

“Thank you, all-knowing seer of possible theoretical situations! Please tell us more about what WILL ABSOLUTELY happen in some alternate future world! Do you have a Web site I can go to for daily updates?”

“The primal fury of the Burn, indeed. I am gladdened every time to know I am participating, again, in one of humanity's very oldest sacred rituals.”